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USGS/GVP Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for 8/25-31/2010

Explore this week's volcanic activity report highlighting eruptions in Kuril Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Kliuchevskoi's ash plume.

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A shiny new report of the week's volcanic activity, brought to us by the Smithsonian, USGS and the Global Volcanism Program ... and of course, Sally Kuhn Sennert.

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Some highlights from this week's report (not including Galeras and Sinabung):

  • I'm always astonished when yet another Kuril Island or Kamchatka Peninsula volcano that of which I am unfamiliar starts making noise. This week's volcano is Ekarma, located in the Kuril Islands. The volcano is producing a steam plume and there is evidence of recent lahars on the small island that hosts Ekarma - the most recent significant (known) eruption was in 1767-69 with minor explosions in 1980.

  • Papua New Guinea's Manam has been rumbling for years now and this week is no exception. The volcano threw incandescent lava bombs from the crater - some traveling hundreds of meters and produced a ~2.4 km / 8000 foot plume.

  • The alert status at Cleveland in the Aleutians was raised recently as well, from Green to Yellow, by AVO. This is due to a "persistent thermal anomaly" noted at the summit, but there is no seismic network near the volcano, so little else is known about its current status.

  • And almost never to be outdone by its Russian neighbors, Kliuchevskoi put on a show last week when it produced a 7.6-10.4 km / 25,000-34,000 foot ash plume, although most of the activity at the volcano recently has been strombolian explosions or lava flow extrusion.

Top left: A shot of the summit of Kliuchevskoi on August 5, 2010. Image courtesy of KVERT.

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